As the esports community gears up for the FACEIT London Major, running through Sept. 23, FACEIT is making history with Twitch, detailing plans to offer fans the “ultimate FACEIT London Major viewing experience” courtesy of the first ever Twitch Premium Pass for a CS:GO event. The pass will allow fans to have an interactive experience during both the Legends and Champions stages of the Major for a one-time $9.99 subscription to FACEIT’s official Twitch channel. The platform will serve up 11 channels powered by interactive stats and custom extensions powered by GenVid, along with an interactive HUD, player POV cameras, and stats and tactics information. In addition, viewers will have access to exclusive chat emojis, premium-only chat channels and exclusive VOD content.

“The Major is the most prestigious CS:GO tournament and sees the highest level of competition from the best teams,” said Michele Attisani, CBO & Co-Founder of FACEIT. “This is the time when fans want to learn even more about the teams they love. We want to offer our audience new innovative and interactive viewing opportunities and we see Premium Passes like this partnership with Twitch as an evolution of traditional esports content.”

COMPETITION and VENUES

Cynopsis, Chief Marketer and Event Marketer are proud to announce the 2018 Hall of Fame inductees, who will be honored as part of The Tempest Awards this year on Oct. 2 as Esports Arena Las Vegas during the Esports Business Summit. This year’s class will recognize the founders of Twitch and OpTic Gaming, two institutions who have changed and evolved the esports industry at its core. Join us as OpTic Gaming’s Hector Rodriguez and Twitch’s Kevin Lin serve as this year’s luminaries. Get your tickets now and see you in a few weeks!

ESL lined up its battleplan for Season 8 of the ESL Pro League CS:GO. The series is set to return for its eighth edition next month as the best teams in Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific and South America duke it out for a spot in the finals, which will be held in Odense, Denmark this December. The regular season will see both the European and North American squads face off against each other twice across a five week span respectively, with three BO2s per day per region and every show day running a second stream. Offline relegation dates are still to be determined. Play begins on Oct. 2 and will run through Nov. 14. The Global Finals will run out of the Sparekassen Fyn Arena in Odense, Denmark on December 7-9. Sixteen teams (7 EU, 6 NA, 1 SA and 2 APAC) will fight for a $1,000,000 prize pool and a win towards the Intel Grand Slam, which grants a further $1,000,000 for the first team to reach four wins across a selected number of events.

Epic Games is embracing a change of Fortnite seasons with plans for a new Fall Skirmish Series that will dangle $10,000,000 in prize money. The company announced the slate and comes after wrapping up its $8,000,000 Fortnite Summer Skirmish with a $1,500,000 battle held at PAX West 2018. Now, the Fortnite Fall Skirmish will run as a six week event. The game developer will detail more plans for the series later this week.

Following a report from VPEsports that the H1Z1 Pro League, created through a partnership between Twin Galaxies and the Daybreak Game Company, was struggling to fulfill contractual obligations and that the second split for the season would no longer begin on Oct. 3 (postponed until early 2019), NantWorks announced a strategic investment in Daybreak Game Company that will see the company assume control and management of the current PC H1Z1 Battle Royale game. Jace Hall, Chairman of Twin Galaxies, and Vision Entertainment, posted that the new partnership would help rectify issues with the H1Z1 Pro League. In addition, game producers noted that the league is still targeted to return in 2019.

The Rocket League World Championship will return to the US this season with Psyonix locking in Orleans Arena in Las Vegas to host the Season Six finals. Season six got underway this past weekend. In the announcement, Psyonix noted that the event, running Nov. 9-11 will follow the online Regional Championships with the best ten teams in the world competing for their share of the largest RLCS prize pool yet, $1,000,000.

Turn 10 Studios posted that this year’s Forza Racing Championship will bring its championship race to London from Oct. 20-21 at Gfinity Esports Arena. Competition gears up with the ForzaRC Series 2 Playoffs taking place in Mexico City from Sept. 29-30, where the top 36 ForzaRC drivers will compete. After the Playoffs, the top 24 drivers will have the chance to move on to the Forza Racing World Championship 2018.

The NBA 2K League announced that Jazz Gaming won the NBA 2K League Draft Lottery and will have the first overall pick in the 2019 NBA 2K League Draft. Warriors Gaming Squad will have the second overall pick, and Kings Guard Gaming will have the third overall pick. Additionally, the affiliate of the Atlanta Hawks won the NBA 2K League Expansion Draft Lottery, which was also conducted today at the NBA office in New York City, and will have the first overall pick in the first NBA 2K League Expansion Draft. The affiliate of the Brooklyn Nets will have the second overall pick in the expansion draft, the affiliate of the Minnesota Timberwolves will have the third overall pick in the expansion draft, and the affiliate of the Los Angeles Lakers will have the fourth overall pick in the expansion draft. The expansion draft will be held Sept. 24, the four expansion teams will each select two players from the non-protected player pool.

BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Nordic AB and DreamHack are partnering for a new event in the DRAGON BALL FighterZ World Tour, DreamHack Winter – DRAGON BALL FighterZ Dragon Radar. Serving as a new stop into the fighting game tournament series the event will run Nov. 30-Dec. 3 out of Elmia, Jonkoping.

INSIGHTS

Last weekend both the NA and EU LCS drew to a close, with Team Liquid securing the number one slot in both splits. Stream Hatchet’s access to season wide data, enables its users to track the growth of both leagues across the season.

The NA LCS was a more popular league this split. Both the NA peak audience (33% higher) and average audience (7% higher) were greater than EU audiences.

Although the EU audience was smaller than the NA audience, the EU audience was more consistent month to month. The standard deviation of the EU LCS AVG CCV was 82% less than the NA LCS AVG CCV.

Overwatch League confirmed plans to finalize expansion ahead of season two, announcing an additional six teams that would join Atlanta and Guangzhou as new franchises for the league. The additions include Chengdu, Hangzhou, Paris, Toronto, Vancouver, and Washington, D.C. for an overall total of 20 total teams – nine of them outside of the United States. The ownership groups for the new franchises include the Aquilini Group for the Vancouver slot; Bilibili for Hangzhou; DM Esports overseeing the Paris franchise; HUYA Inc operating the team in Chengdu, China; OverActive Media owning the team in Toronto and Washington Esports Ventures taking on the team in DC.

H2K and Paris Saint-Germain have reportedly finalized a partnership agreement that will bring the two companies together as co-applicants for a franchise slot in the European League of Legends Championship Series, according to ESPN. The deal will see H2K act as the operating partner for the team. The duo mark one of about two dozen applicants in the second stage of the European League of Legends Championship Series franchising process, league sources told ESPN. The league is expected to select those teams in October.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

Cheers to the Tempest Finalists & “The Watch List” Honorees!

Winners to be announced at the Tempest Esports Business Awards Gala:

OCT 2 | 7PM – 9:45PM | The Luxor Esports Arena, Las Vegas

In addition to our talented category finalists, the event will spotlight “The Watch List” honorees. These are the esports executives whose creativity and innovation have put them at the forefront of the industry. Don’t take your eyes off these esports game-changers (click here to view “The Watch List”).

With positive reviews coming in for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and its Blackout battle royale mode, the Call of Duty Endowment locked in its date for this year’s edition of The Race charity stream. The annual event will take place on Oct. 11 with Twitch personalities GoldGlove, VernNotice, JERICHO and HUTCH leading this year’s charity stream, looking to race to be the first account to hit max prestige in the title’s multiplayer mode.

Nintendo is going back to school to promote the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Ultimate game, launching a promotional tour to join university tailgate parties this college football season. The activation will be part of the Wendy’s College Tailgate Tour, letting fans play the game before its release in December. The setup will feature a customized Super Smash Bros. Ultimate branded trailer with six gameplay stations and a large LED screen in dedicated tailgate areas outside of major college stadiums so fans can gather, play and cheer each other on as they “compete in epic battles featuring their favorite video game characters – and maybe even emerge victorious against their own real-life rivals.” The action begins on Sept. 22 at the Stanford/Oregon game.

Ruffles, the official chip of the NBA, is taking its activation to the new NBA 2K19 game, announcing plans to introduce The RIDGE on the live Game Mode. Starting Sept. 30, players will be able to shoot for a first-of-its-kind 4-point line. The activation marks one of the first brands to activate a game-changing element into a professional sports league video game. Fans can further enhance their NBA 2K experience by purchasing specially marked bags of Ruffles containing codes to unlock a virtual currency multiplier for the Ruffle Ridge Challenge and a chance to win prizes such as gaming consoles, TV and home-theater systems and copies of NBA 2K19.

Bud Light Canada is backing a new esports series featuring Bil Carter, Michele Morrow and content producer GiantWaffle. The series is titled Game Over and will debut on Thursday at 9p on the brand’s Twitch channel, offering “the best esports plays, fails, snipes, and clutches” from around the world of esports.

FanAI SNAPSHOT

Following the NA LCS Summer Playoff Finals this past weekend in Oakland, FanAI was interested in seeing if any of the title sponsors showed an increase in their brand awareness with esports fans. To investigate the social follower ROI, FanAI compared four top QSR sandwich brand’s esports follower percentages from June 2018, when the Jersey Mike’s NALCS sponsorship was announced, and the end of the NALCS Finals weekend. There was expected growth shown across the board, however Jersey Mike’s following grew at 1.2x – 1.7x the rate of the other brands. This indicates that the growth was driven by an outside factor, perhaps this factor was their sponsorship of the NALCS.

INDUSTRY

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds became the first game in Steam history to top the million player mark for an entire year. PCGamesN first spotted the achievement, noting that PUBG first broke the million players on Sept. 8, 2017 when 1,028,275 people played the game over the course of a 24-hour period.

Esports Charts reported on August’s most viewed esports events around the world, this year led by Chinese esports league LPL Summer, which nabbed peak viewership of 67.8 million viewers on Aug. 19. Discounting Chinese audiences, however, the month saw The International command the top spot, where it drew nearly 1.2 million peak viewers on Aug. 26. That was followed by Fortnite Summer Skirmish Week 4 with 527,721 peak viewership on Aug. 3, the Call of Duty World League Championship on Aug. 19 with 324,433, LCK Summer at 287,639 on Aug. 1 and the NA LCS Summer on Aug. 26 with 279,233.

A new report from Newzoo states that games will account for 76% of a projected $92.1 billion in mobile app revenue in 2018. Overall, global mobile gaming revenue will approach nearly $70 billion this year, up from $42.5 billion in 2016 and projected to hit $106.4 billion in 2021.

Nintendo is poised to announce the start date for its online service today with Sept. 18 posed as the start date. A one-week trial will be offered on that date, according to Polygon, available through the Nintendo Switch eShop, with 20 games available at launch.

ROSTER MOVES

GINX Esports TV named Caleb Fox as its SVP of global multiplatform development. Fox was most recently a former Business Development consultant for Games and Esports at Microsoft in addition to serving as Head of Esports at Wargaming America. “We set out to find a needle in a haystack: an executive with multiplatform content experience, who was also a digital native as well as an esports insider,” said Michiel Bakker, Ginx TV CEO. “Following an extensive search process, we found our man in Caleb. He is ideally placed to help GINX Esports TV scale up our community-focused digital presence and to create more touchpoints for our brand. He already has made an impact at GINX TV and I look forward to working with him to bring new digital products to our community.”

Canadian Olympic Committee CEO Chris Overholt is stepping down after eight years at the organization to join the expansion Overwatch League franchise based in Toronto. The Toronto spot is among eight reported expansion teams for Season Two of the league, owned by a group led by Canadian entrepreneur Michael Kimel and operated by esports organization Splyce.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

Time to Tune-in to the Future Industry Leaders

The Fourth Annual Cynopsis Rising Star Awards is gearing up for its best year yet…Don’t miss this great opportunity to honor yourself or a colleague with a nomination. The groundbreaking work that these ambitious and creative young professionals have accomplished over the past year deserves to be celebrated – and we can’t wait to see what they have to offer!

Trivia: What is the name of the world that encompasses the various kingdoms and lands in most Mario games? (Emailchris-sports@cynopsis.comwith your answer and be sure to include your name, company and city.)

JOB OPENING:SR ANDROID ENGINEER/XUMO/Irvine CA: Exp’d Android engineer resp for writing code that adds capability & utility, but you’ll also take an active role in ensuring all aspects of your work can be achieved at massive scale. 3+ yrs of work exp building Android apps in Java using Android SDK. Full info HERE. Resume to: jobs@xumo.com(9/15)

JOB OPENING:REGIONAL ACCOUNT MGR/TLMD/PHOENIX: Develop sales revenue from new advertisers as well as maximize revenue from assigned list (active & non-active accounts). Min 3 yrs exp in the area of Media Sales. Ability to function in a confidential, fast-paced, multi-cultural environment. Full info/apply HERE (9/14)

JOB OPENING:ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE/Owned Stations, Affiliate Relations, NBCU/McAllen TX: Generate revenue to the station and its web/digital product from both traditional and non-traditional prospects in the Rio Grande Valley market. Min 2 yrs exp in business development & direct sales. Full info/apply HERE (9/14)

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